


War Isn't Hell. War Is War And Hell Is Hell.

by wordswordswords7



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Endless casualties, Gen, Hawkeye is struggling, I wrote a sad my bad, Korean War, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26818438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswordswords7/pseuds/wordswordswords7
Summary: Hawkeye's head is pounding and the casualties keep coming in droves. He's running on fumes and—with no reprieve in sight—the sleepless nights are taking their toll. His friends at the 4077th begin to worry that it's only a matter of time before the Korean War takes yet another casualty.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	War Isn't Hell. War Is War And Hell Is Hell.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this over a decade ago, and thought I'd revive it for AO3. I've recently been rewatching M*A*S*H again (because if we all have time for anything nowadays it's binge watching a 256 episode show), and it put me in the mood to do sad things to beloved characters. 
> 
> Sorry-not-sorry. 
> 
> Anyway...enjoy or whatever.

Hawkeye Pierce stared blankly into his empty martini glass. He frowned—he didn’t remember draining it dry. Pouring a second round, he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t just keep pouring until he drowned in the stuff? It seemed preferable; drowning in the stiff gin from the still rather than on the operating table with a hole in the chest.

That’s how Private Trent had died and from where Hawkeye was standing, it had been a pretty damn lousy way to go. What had he been, eighteen? Eighteen was looking younger every day. He might as well have been a boy with a stick in the yard not a young man with a gun on the front. 

Or on Hawk’s operating table at the tail end of fourteen gruelling hours of surgery. 

But there he’d been, with Hawkeye standing over him blurrily digging the dirt and shrapnel out of his lungs. And there he’d died like so many before him at the 4077th.

As he brooded over the fates of all the Private Trents removed abruptly by the ongoing “police action”, the door of The Swamp swung open. Hawkeye half-hoped it would be BJ back from Seoul a day early, but instead Frank entered the surgeons’ bunk with a sneer.

“Oh, that’s nice this early in the day,” he said, eyeing the martini glass. “And you call yourself a Captain in this man’s army.”

“The army called me a Captain first, Frank,” Hawkeye bit back but the retort sounded tired and lacklustre even to his ears.

“That’s _Major_ Burns to you, buster!”

“Frank, if you’re just going to be a _major_ pain in my backside could you do me a favour and do it in silence? You’re giving me a _major_ headache.”

It was true. A wall of tension had begun pressing against the back of his eyes and he passed a hand over them to block out the morning light shining through the mosquito net walls, as well as the familiar sight of Frank polishing his boots.

“For your information, Colonel Potter wants to see you in his office, Pierce,” Frank said loftily as if he’d been handpicked to deliver such a message, benign as it was.

Hawkeye groaned. “Can’t a guy get some rest around here?”

Standing, he tossed the now empty glass onto his cot with so much force it bounced off again. “Can’t I just _sit down_ for five lousy minutes after being on my feet with my hands inside of chests, and stomachs, and guts all night and all morning? Can’t I get a goddamn _break_?!”

“Well don’t look at me!” Frank recoiled, but Hawkeye was already storming out of The Swamp, fueled by the fumes of anger.

He was out of gas all too soon, and by the time he strode past the Mess Tent, he felt as drained as ever. The pitying look in Margaret’s eyes as he passed her by was proof enough that he looked as bad as he felt. If even her sharp tongue softened at the sight of him, he must really be in bad shape.

Hawkeye entered Colonel Potter’s office, his mouth settling into a grim line when he saw who else was waiting for him there.

“Hiya Hawk.”

“Hey there, Sidney.” He greeted the army shrink flatly. “To what do I owe the pleasure of these pleasantries?”

“Sit down son,” the Colonel said softly.

“I’d rather stand.”

It was a bluff. He was aching to crawl into bed and would have curled up on the floor if they let him.

“Colonel Potter tells me you’ve been having a rough couple of days,” Sidney said, in that gentle and unassuming voice that made Hawkeye want to unleash every thought in his head and run for the hills in equal measure.

“You really didn’t need to come all this way to tell me I’m crazy Sid,” Hawkeye admonished half-heartedly, pressing the heel of his palm into his temple absentmindedly. “The voices in Frank’s head already passed the message along.”

“You’re not crazy,” the other man replied simply. “You know that.”

“Than why am I in Korea?"

Colonel Potter’s brows knit together tightly, teetering on the brink of a no-nonsense mood. “Now come on Pierce. Sidney’s here to have a chat with you, that’s all!”

“Sorry Colonel, but I’m not in the chatting mood.”

“Horse hooey! Now listen here,” Colonel Potter barked as he stood up from behind his desk, a formidable figure for all that he was several inches shorter than the unaffected Captain before him. “You can bet your bottom—”

“I lost it in a bet already.”

“—that your gonna go back to The Swamp with the Major here, and get whatever is on your mind off it! And you’re not coming out until you’re finished!” 

The Chief Surgeon hadn’t stirred so much as an inch throughout the brief tirade and Colonel Potter’s demeaner seemed to deflate a little at the sight of him. “We’re just trying to help, Hawkeye. Now, go on. It’s just a little chat between friends.”

Hawkeye raised a placating hand and beckoned for the psychiatrist to follow him. “Yes, mother.”

Neither said a word until they reached The Swamp, which was as much a mess as it ever was, but he knew that Sidney’s eyes never left him.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Sidney commented lightly, moving aside a pile of army greens to take a seat on BJ’s cot. 

Hawkeye dropped onto his own bed.

“Yes, but I can’t seem to do a thing about the annoying noise that keeps coming from that corner of the tent.” He gestured to Frank who was still polishing the shine right out of his boots. A biting edge was creeping into his voice.

“I don’t have to put up with this insubordination!” Frank snapped, jamming his boots onto his feet and tying the laces fervently before leaving in a huff.

In his wake there was silence, and Sidney seemed content to sit in it while Hawkeye lay back against his pillow, pinching the bridge of his nose and clenching his jaw.

“No offence Sid,” he eventually muttered, “but I really don’t know why Potter dragged you out here.”

“He seems to think you’re struggling to cope these last few days.”

“I’ve been struggling to cope since basic training.”

“Where’s BJ?”

“Seoul for R&R.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“About a week, the lucky bastard.”

“Have you been sleeping?”

“I’m too tired to sleep.”

Even now his eyelids were heavy.

“How many hours were you in the OR last?”

“What is this, Twenty Questions?”

But by now, Hawkeye had been under the eye of Major Sidney Freedman enough times to know the man’s strategy. Prod with the short, simple questions until the right one set off a deluge of emotional exposition. Thinking only of silence and sleep, he opted to jump right to the rant Sidney was waiting for, ignoring the fact that (once again) the strategy had worked.

“Look, it’s been a stressful week. I’d love to stop taking work home with me, but I live here now and boys keep getting shot outside my house. So yes, I’ve been elbow deep in soldiers for longer than I can count, and I don’t know what day of the week it is. And no, I haven’t been sleeping because we’re a surgeon short without Beej here and Frank is about as useless as they come. And the wounded keep coming and _dying_ , and it’s hard to keep up. So between the OR and Post-Op rounds, there isn’t much time to get any shuteye. Except for right about now, ya know. And on top of all that, my head is _pounding_.”

Sidney simply stared at him, unaffected by the pointed barb thrown in his direction.

“Colonel Potter mentioned you had lost a young man this morning.”

“Lost? That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“Oh?”

“He’s not lost. ‘Lost’ implies he can find his way back.”

“Sometimes wounded soldiers die, and there’s nothing even a brilliant surgeon like yourself can do about it. You’re not God.”

“Not God,” Hawkeye repeated bitterly. “If I was, I might actually do some good around here for once! Answer a few of the prayers that seem to be getting lost in the mail.”

“The Padre might have something to say about that. And anyway, you’ve saved so many lives since you got here, Hawk. Surely you can see the good in that?” Sidney pressed.

But Hawkeye had heard enough, and he was so damn tired and worn out. He shook his head and turned on his side with Sidney at his back—a clear and bitter dismissal.

“Tell that to Private Trent’s mother.”

Sidney remained for a moment longer, perhaps hoping that there was one more sarcastic quip coming. But there was none and eventually, he got up to leave. Hawkeye heard him pause at the door, and he was starting to feel guilty for turning his back on a man he considered his friend. But when Sidney spoke again it was in a tone that was nothing but forgiving, gentle, and brimming with sympathy.

“It’s Saturday, Hawk.” 

And then he was gone.

* * *

BJ drove into the 4077th around noon on Sunday and was pulled directly into Pre-Op without so much as a “Hi, how are ya?” from Klinger who had spied him coming in. He didn’t come out of the OR again until nearly midnight. Frank had Post-Op rounds and Hawkeye had yet to return to The Swamp.

He’d seemed in a mood all day, unusually quiet and only speaking to tell Nurse Kellye what he needed. He’d even gone so far as to snap at her, which had cast the whole room into uncomfortable hush and prompted Margaret to swap places with the young woman. And, much to BJ’s surprise, Margaret hadn’t even snapped back at him for mistreating one of her nurses, she just got to work and matched his pace without a word.

When the last patient came in, it was a young local boy and he was placed on Hawkeye’s table. He couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven, and one of his legs had been blown clean off by a landmine. It was a wonder he hadn’t bled out on the way to the camp. As the others were finishing up with their own patients, BJ kept one eye on his friend as he tried in desperation to save the child. 

“Come on, COME ON DAMMIT!”

But it was no use. Hawkeye’s shoulders slumped and the blood covering his surgeon’s smock said all there needed to be said.

“Doctor…” 

“What Margaret?” 

She hesitated, and BJ was thrown by the sight of a hesitant Major Houlihan. “Time of death, Hawkeye.”

He shook himself, staring back at her a moment as if confused. Then he glanced at the clock over the door and sighed. “Time of death: eleven fifty-two PM.” 

When they all finally trudged out into the cool night air, BJ beelined for the showers while Potter took Hawk to his office to talk. He hadn’t seen him since.

He would talk to him about it tomorrow. He’d get to the bottom of his best friend’s dark mood and he would cheer him up with a new Frank Burns scheme or maybe with a cathartic afternoon of driving golf balls into the landmine field outside of camp.

With that decided, BJ rolled over in his cot and did what he always did to fall asleep. He imagined Peg sleeping at his back, feeling the rise and fall of her chest as her arms encircled him. He drifted off, buoyed by the thought of her soft breath against the back of his neck, warm in their bed under the California stars.

* * *

Sherman had never seen Pierce looking so low. He filled two glasses of whiskey but to his surprise the other man didn’t take the drink.

“What’s going on son?” he asked.

Pierce stared into the glass sitting untouched on the desk before him. “They keep dying. Yesterday...two days ago? That kid was eighteen. This one was, what? He was no more than a baby. Tomorrow he might be forty, in a week he might be an old man who never asked for any of this to land on his doorstep. And what difference does it make anyway? Eisenhower has a bullet with each of their names on it, and everyone’s just waiting to see who’s gonna pull the trigger. And no one cares that _we_ have to put them back together, or that they’re just going to die on our table anyway. There’s a pile of bodies getting higher by the minute around us, and what difference does it make so long as someone is left to plant their flag on all of them? It’s bullshit, and I’m tired, and it just doesn’t stop. They never stop coming. They never stop dying. I’ve got blood on my hands and it won’t come off and I never asked for it.”

If it had been an impassioned speech, Sherman may have felt better about it. But it had been flat and dark, lacking all of Pierce’s usual frenetic cynicism. 

Before Sherman could offer any words of comfort though, Hawkeye stood up.

“I’m tired Colonel, I think I’ll go to bed.”

He left just as Radar was entering. “Oh hi, Hawkeye.”

But the Chief Surgeon just walked past him.

“Don’t take it personally Radar,” Sherman assured the boy. “He’s not himself tonight.”

“Sure, sir.”

“Do me a favour and—”

“I’ll call Sparky and get Major Freedman—”

“—call I Corps and get Sidney Freedman back here.”

“Yes sir!”

Radar left in a hurry, leaving Sherman to wonder yet again how the hell that kid did it.

* * *

Hawkeye walked around the dark camp, unable to sit still. He needed a break. Not just a week in Seoul. He needed Crabapple Cove in the summer when the sun was rising up above the housetops, the lush grass between his toes and a steaming cup of Maine’s best coffee clutched in both hands. He needed his father sitting on the porch behind him reading his copy of The Last of the Mohicans, every once in a while reading a passage aloud; his voice sounding like rustling pages to Hawkeye’s ears. He needed Dan Pierce to look up from over the top of his book and say something like:  
  
“If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

He looked around him now. Sleepy tents and harsh camp lights that hurt his eyes, the only life coming from inside Post-Op where Frank and a handful of nurses were doing rounds. It was quiet now, but some nights he could hear shelling in the distance—a cruel precursor to long days in surgery. He looked down the main roadway out of camp, swallowed by darkness. 

A strange thought came to him then. That the road out of camp, dark as it was, looked like the gaping maw of some rabid dog, ready to swallow him whole at any moment.

He really ought to go to bed. He really was so bone tired.

“Captain? _Hawkeye_.”

He turned to see Margaret watching him strangely. She must have been trying to get his attention for a while now. Her brows were fixed together in concern with a sympathetic look that made him want to scream. He liked it better when she was screeching at him like an ally cat. Except...not really. He liked Margaret, and knew she liked him too. It was just that it was a comfort to know that in the middle of this chaos he could rely on her sharp tongue and fiery temper for a laugh when he needed it. 

She reached out as if to touch his arm now, but he took a step back and turned toward The Swamp. “Goodnight Margaret.”

BJ was sleeping soundly when he got to their tent. And though he hadn’t slept in days, he lay awake in his cot, wondering if he might never sleep again.

* * *

Breakfast at the 4077th was more a test of bravery than an actual meal. BJ eyed his powdered eggs with a grimace and opted to start with the day-old coffee instead. Beside him, Hawk was staring unseeing at his own tray and he wondered when his friend’s hair had started going grey? And had he been that pale when he saw him just last night?

“You alright Hawk?” He asked, trying to mask the worry in his voice.

He didn’t seem to hear him, and continued to stare as Radar joined their table. He took one look at Hawkeye and turned in alarm to BJ.

“What’s the matter with the Captain, Captain?”

All BJ could do was shrug. Maybe all Hawkeye needed was some R&R. He resolved to make a case for it to Potter after breakfast. But before he could take a bite of his “eggs” Radar shot up from his seat.

“Choppers!”

Just then Klinger’s voice came over the camp speakers, having picked up the call while Radar was out.

_“Attention! Attention! All personnel! Incoming wounded, on the double. Hope you’re all well-rested.”_

BJ groaned and turned to Hawkeye, but he was already gone.

* * *

Nurses triaged patients outside. In the OR, every table was full. Post-Op was filling so quickly that they were putting men in the Mess Tent. It would be another forty-eight hours before I Corps could send ambulatory buses to take some of the wounded to the 4074th to relieve them.

“Two whole days?” Frank whined.

“Congratulations Frank,” BJ replied dryly, “your math is improving.”

“Quiet down over there!” Colonel Potter barked. “The less you jokers chatter, the sooner we can all get out of here. Now shut it!”

It was silent after that, or as silent as an operating room could be. Hawkeye was grateful for the quiet. The headache that had been hounding him was now a full blown migraine, and standing over patient after patient was making his neck stiffen and ache. 

“Clamp.”

It was as if someone else had said it.

“Suction.”

He was standing on the other side of the room, watching as some stranger wearing his face stuck his hands into a man’s belly.

“I can’t see a damn thing. More suction.”

He was vaguely aware of Radar entering to say that there were no more patients waiting. 

“Suction Margaret!”

“Doctor, it’s clear.”

He blinked. His eyes _hurt_.

“Why is that light so bright?”

Pain jolted through his neck.

“Captain—”

“More suction, are you deaf?!”

Everything was murky. He couldn’t see what his hands were doing. His head was _pounding_ against the sides of his skull and the whole room seemed to be spinning. Was the floor moving?

Someone shouted as his knees buckled from under him and the OR flickered out like a light.

* * *

“Will someone please explain to me what the hell happened back there?”

BJ was shaking. He, Margaret, and Frank were all piled into the Colonel’s office. Sherman was sitting behind his desk and Sidney was leaning against the wall having just arrived.

“He’s been having a rough couple of days,” the Colonel said, sighing. “My guess is everything just caught up to him.”

“Has he been sleeping?” Sidney asked.

“Last night? He got in after I’d gone to sleep already.” BJ answered dejectedly.

“He got in late,” Sherman said. “We had a talk after surgery and that was well past midnight.”

“And he was wandering around camp after that,” Margaret added.

“Before last night? He was exhausted when I saw him last.”

They all turned to Frank who shifted under their stares.

“He’s been getting in late, that’s all I know! In late and up early!”

“I’ll have a talk with him when he wakes up,” Sidney said. Turning to the Colonel he added, “I suggest you schedule some R&R, Colonel. Doctor’s orders.”

The surgeons and Head Nurse left the office at a trudge, their contemplative silence interrupted by Frank. “Not that anyone asked me, but I’m next for R&R on the roster. And I need a week away just as bad as Pierce does! Why should he get all the special treatment around here? I say this is just another ruese to get out of his duties. A _good_ doctor would—”

SMACK.

BJ’s fist stung, but probably not as much as the side of Frank’s face did.

“Benjamin Hawkeye Pierce is ten times the doctor you’ll ever be, Frank!” He seethed, standing over the Major who had fallen to the ground.

Frank stared back at him gaping. As BJ stormed off he turned to Margaret, hoping perhaps for a modicum of the comfort she may have once offered him before the days of Donald Penobscott. Before the days of forging small gangways in her underscored friendships with Hawkeye and BJ. Before the days of discovering her self-respect.

“Stay down Frank, unless you’re gunning for another.”

She followed BJ into The Swamp, leaving Frank in the dirt behind her.

BJ was sitting on his cot eyeing Hawkeye through splayed hands.

“Let me have a look at that hand.”

She sat across from him on the edge of Hawkeye’s cot and took BJ’s hand into her own to examine it. 

“That was a silly thing for a surgeon to do,” she admonished, but her heart wasn’t in it. “What if you had broken it?”

He pulled away and flexed his fingers, sore but no worse for wear. “It sure felt good at the time.”

She gave him a small smile before turning to the unconscious man beside her. She placed a hand on his forehead and frowned. “He’s still feverish.”

“When Post-Op clears up, we can put him there. For now just let him sleep it off.”

“It will be two days at least,” she warned. “I’ll add him to the schedule and make sure one of my nurses comes to check on him here during rounds.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine, he just needs rest.”

She nodded and was kind enough not to acknowledge that BJ sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

It ended up being three days before they could spare a bed for Hawkeye. Three days without new casualties, and before I Corps could relieve the camp of most of their wounded. Hawkeye’s condition had not improved. While he had woken off and on again, it was to a concerning delirium brought on from a relentless and mounting fever. Unable to keep any food down, he groaned about pain and spoke to people no one could see.

His father. His dead mother. Even Henry Blake once. Margaret hadn’t been able to listen to that and Kellye had to take over while she composed herself outside.

On the evening of the third day, they stood gathered around his bed while Colonel Potter looked over his charts and told them what they had all suspected.

“It’s meningitis, no question about it. Not viral though. Fungal maybe?”

“How on earth did he get that?” Father Mulcahy, who had frequently spent time at Hawkeye’s bedside, asked.

“He spent some time helping an injured man on farm not far from here, remember?” the Colonel answered. At BJ's look of confusion he added, “Just after you left. Could be he picked it up there somehow.”

“Someone ought to check on the family,” Margaret said absently and Colonel Potter touched her arm, acknowledging the suggestion.

She barely felt it. She couldn’t take her eyes off the unconscious man before her. He looked so small, even with his feet nearly hanging off the too-short bed. And empty too. Without his raucous laughter and ear splitting grin, this was just a shell of Hawkeye Pierce.

Just then, a spasm rolled through his prone body, stiffening his arms and legs. Every muscle pulled him straight and ridgid, his fingers and toes curled painfully close and his jaw clenched unforgivably tight. His blue eyes, bright with fever, rolled and blinked rapidly.

At the very first sign of trouble, the group had snapped into action—poised medical professionalism taking over the fearful side of each of them when the moment demanded it. But there was only so much they could do except to ride the seizure out. As Margaret anxiously timed the episode with her wristwatch, BJ’s composure started to crack.

“Come on dammit, come out of it.”

It was seven long minutes before Hawkeye’s body relaxed, and they could all take a collective breath. But then…

“Hawk?”

BJ’s voice was small as he held his best friend’s wrist limply under his fingers. After a moment he pressed his stethascope to Hawkeye’s bare chest, and then listened carefully for a breath. Nothing.

“BJ,” Margaret pleaded, her voice sounding thin and close to breaking.

“No, no, no…”

BJ jumped onto the bed, straddling Hawkeye’s waist and began pumping chest compressions, counting under his breath. How long he did it for, none of them could remember later. But it must have been quite the sight for the soldiers around them; the Head Nurse crying in the arms of the chaplain while the camp Colonel foreceably pulled a surgeon away from a dead man’s lifeless body. 

And through his tears, they could hear BJ Hunnicut angrily demanding that Hawkeye Pierce come back. That there were more kids out there being blown to bits, and Beej couldn’t fix them on his own. How dare he leave? And Colonel Potter held him tightly by both arms; held on like if he let go for even a second that he, Sherman, would be lost on the tide of grief forever. 

“...come back you idiot, I’ll go crazy without you...”

* * *

The Swamp felt empty. Hawkeye’s mess had been cleaned up, either packed away to be sent to Maine or else distributed around camp to his closest friends.

BJ had folded all the clothes, packaged up all the knicknacks from Seoul, and bottled up the last of the swill from the old gin still. It would go to Dan Pierce to along with a long letter from Potter and one from himself too. 

BJ sat back with a shuddered breath. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, one still bruised from the shot he’d taken at Frank. How did life ever get to be this? When had they let it happen? Just a couple weeks ago the two of them had been dying Frank’s uniform yellow and laughing their heads off about it. And now? Now the whole camp seemed sunken into the cheerlessness Hawk had left in his wake.

The door opened and the cot dipped as someone sat beside him.

“How are you feeling, Beej?” Sidney asked.

“Like the war is taking everything it can get it’s hands on,” he replied honestly.

“I know the feeling. What are you going to do with that?”

He was gesturing to the still which now sat empty.

BJ shrugged. “I really have no idea.”

“Seems to me, Hawkeye wouldn’t want you to give up his favourite vice on his account.”

BJ cocked an eyebrow and smiled a little for the first time in days. “His _favourite_ vice?”

Sidney seemed to recall the endless carousing and long line of nurses, some open to a little comfort and some that put Hawk in his place (not for lack of trying).

“Ah, well. His second favourite vice than. But do me a favour?”

“What’s that, Sid?”

“Tone it down a bit will ya? No more morning martinis in The Swamp. It doesn’t look good if the brass hears I’ve been condoning that kind of thing.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Have a batch ready for our next poker night. I can’t think of anything that would tickle Hawk more than the idea of getting a priest, a psychiatrist, and an army Colonel drunk on illegal hooch, do you?

BJ had to smile at that. “I’ll cheers to that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Uh yeah. Why did I write this? I dunno man, sorry. What a downer.


End file.
